Can of Beans - GC168DE

Find #621 on 04/30/11 at 4:33 PM

Enjoying a lovely day out in the woods with the GeoKids: GuitarMan24, Anrock and GeoKid#3. After finding several micros in the woods, I thought it might be more fun if we went after a regular. Two stage multi... sounds pretty straightforward. At first we crossed the bridge before heading into the woods and seeing that we'd need to cross the stream, Anrock and I headed back while GM24 and GK#3 braved a crossing on logs. We met back on the bike trail and found stage 1 with no problems.

Stage two wasn't far off, so we continued, only to find that the stream again blocked us with only about 150 feet to the cache. GM24 wanted to cross and did so successfully, though not without a few near slips, but managed to stay completely dry. I wrapped up the GPS and tossed it to him. We followed him on the other side of the stream and watched him make the retrieval. GM24 brought it over so we could see it, and made a trade. I grabbed some logs, thinking I could make his return trip a bit less trepidatious. I handed Anrock my camera and iPhone and tossed some additional logs on the makeshift bridge.

As I was ascending the bank, the iPhone slipped out of Anrock's hand and rolled on its edge like a wheel a good 10 feet and plopped into the murky water. In a panic, I ran back to the edge, submerged my hand and grabbed the phone. Quickly I popped off my Otterbox case to see how much water had actually got to the phone. Poor Anrock felt so bad, but at first appearance, just a couple of drops of water. The Otterbox had done very well to protect it. The earpiece was the only thing that looked a little questionable, so I had GM24 give me a call... nope, I couldn't hear him at all... darn!

I sucked out a bit of mud from the opening trying not to look too shaken because Anrock was really upset. Caching is not her favorite activity anyway, and this experience ending in disaster was sure not to help. With a sick feeling in my stomach, we headed back to the car, and I tried to draw attention to interesting things we were passing on our walk to help Anrock calm down. I continued to suck out the earpiece on the iPhone and had GM24 call me once more... thank the maker! This time it worked. Filled with much relief we stopped for some sodas on the way home by way of celebration for our near disaster averted.
I haven't had my iPhone long, and though I have found it very useful in the field, I won't be taking it on any more high adventure caches in the near future and I think I'll just keep it on me at all times to be on the safe side :) Anyway, an excellent cache and certainly a memorable experience for us. If I had it to do over, I would have taken the long route to stage two and just enjoyed the hike. Maybe next time we are in the area I'll swing in and revisit this one under less stressful circumstances.